


Follow This White Stag No Further

by BeautifulLife



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Deconstruction, Gen, Politics, The Problem of Susan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-15 08:13:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10553020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautifulLife/pseuds/BeautifulLife
Summary: What if Susan, after advising Peter, Edmund, and Lucy not to follow the White Stag beyond the Lantern, held her ground and refused to go further?





	1. Chapter 1

“No,” said Susan. She backed a step away from the strange iron tree with its eerie light.

Her brother Peter glared, his reddish beard bristling. “Art a coward, fair sister?”

“We don’t know what it is.” The wood around it was eerily silent of the rustling speech of dryads. Susan _listened,_ hoping for the stomping and jingling and chatter of courtiers in the distance.

Lord Peridan had protested when the two Kings and two Queens had galloped ahead of their retinue, pursuing a flash of white antlers through the maze of trees. Surely he must have followed.

Edmund gestured broadly. “To discover, nay, to seek adventure was always our wont—”

“To turn down no trial,” Lucy, the youngest, added, brandishing her bow.

Susan swallowed and wiped her hands on her riding dress. “That’s nonsense.” _Please let that rustling be Peridan._

“Susan!” Peter’s tone had that whiny edge she remembered from when he was fourteen and she was twelve. It might be unbecoming in a High King, but it made her smile, just a little, sure that it bothered him to not get full agreement.

“We’re kings and queens now, Peter. We don’t go adventuring just to. . . just to _go_. We have responsibilities.”

Edmund jumped into the void left by Peter’s frustration. “Madam, while we palaver, the White Stag may be escaping beyond our reach.”

“Then let it.” Susan stared down Edmund’s disapproval and Lucy’s wide-eyed hurt. “We’ve had a good day of riding. Let’s go back to our camp and sing songs of the olden days, like we’ve done before.”

The trees parted to reveal Lord Peridan’s long nose, shock of curly black hair, and the rest of him, with dust pale on his dark skin and tunic. “Your majesties—”

Lucy reached a hand to caress the strange iron tree. “You’re always the spoilsport, Susan. You didn’t want to believe me to follow me _here._ If you’d had your way, we wouldn’t be kings and queens.”

“Are there others with you?” Susan asked Lord Peridan.

He nodded. “Four men, three Badgers, two Fauns, and the Fox Reynard. They’ll be with us. . .aha!” The Fox wound itself around his knees.

“Good Fox,” Susan said, “are there dangers beyond this mysterious tree?”

Reynard looked from her to her siblings. “Are there not always dangers outside Narnia?”

“I’m going,” Lucy said. “Edmund, are you with me?”

“Of course.”

_You can say no to her,_ Susan wanted to scream, but one lesson Edmund had learned well was never to say no to Lucy. “Peter, please tell them to stay?”

“Wherefore, when I wish to accompany them? Sister, gird your courage and embrace the adventure sent to us.” Peter held out a hand, as if he were simply helping her across a vine bridge—but her balance had always been better than his, and she’d learned to politely avoid courtly gestures that were stupid.

Behind her, she could hear the rest of their retinue emerging from the woods. Susan had also learned that controversial rulings are safer with witnesses.

“No. No, thank you. No, Peter, I’m not going. We have a kingdom to rule.”

“Then you will stand regent for us until our return,” Peter said. Then he turned, with Lucy and Edmund flanking him, and walked past the iron tree.

Peridan darted forward. “Let me follow them.”

“Of course.” This was prudent. It might be there was nothing to the iron tree, and all Susan’s foreboding was indigestion. It might be there was a real danger that would require more than two swords and a bow. She sent with Peridan one Badger, two men, Mr. Tumnus, and Reynard the Fox, while she and the others returned to their horses.

The ride back to their encampment felt slow and dejected, but surely that was a matter of her horse being tired. Being among Talking Animals—a camp always had Beavers and usually Mice—reassured her. Hot tea reassured her more, especially since trade agreements with Calormen meant she could enjoy that peculiarly strong leaf she’d had only in the women’s quarters in Tashbaan.

Still, she could barely feel surprise when Peridan’s party returned to camp without her siblings. He left his horse with a Beaver and came to kneel where she sat by the fire.

“Your Majesty.” His voice trembled. So did his hand, holding his hat over his breast. “They disappeared. They simply disappeared.” Behind him, Mr. Tumnus was weeping.


	2. Chapter 2

They searched the woods three times before Susan asked her retinue to start the return journey to Cair Paravel. She owed her brothers and sister that much, though she had no expectation of finding any trace of them. At no time did she go near the iron tree herself.

By the time the party reached Beruna, she had heard chittering among the birds that she had somehow disposed of High King Peter, King Edmund, and Queen Lucy, though sorcery or trickery, so that she could rule alone. Anyone could look at red-eyed Mr. Tumnus and ashen-faced Lord Peridan and see that was not true.

Susan did not cry. Yet.

The last mile of the road to Cair Paravel was lined with the people of Narnia: mostly Talking Animals, of course, interspersed with long-bearded dwarfs, curly-horned fauns, the few dryads whose trees were near enough, two small giants, and the handful of humans who’d returned to Narnia from Archenland or the wastes beyond the western mountains.

They wore their finest clothes and their solemnest expressions. As she passed on her horse, the crowd fell silent, and for a long, terrified moment, Susan wondered if she was to be accused of her siblings’ murder after all. An angry mob of their subjects could literally _eat_ her. . .

“Hail, Queen Susan the Gentle!” one of the giants roared. “Hail to the Queen.”

_Hail to the Queen_. The crowd picked up the chant. _Hail to the Queen._

And so Queen Susan rode to Cair Paravel to rule alone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (TW: abandonment, fear of assault)

Holding a memorial for the others meant accepting they would never come back, and Susan was certain she’d cry if she did that.

The business of ruling alone was, at first, familiar enough. She’d taken her turn to stay behind while the others went to war or diplomacy, to dispense justice or to give a royal benediction. Only a little time ago, when Edmund and Lucy went to intervene in the invasion of Archenland by Calormen—

No. Best not to think of that.

The difference this time, as she dispensed heard complaints and dispensed justice, reviewed treaties and argued diplomacy, and greeted courtiers who variously grunted, roared, barked, meowed, whinnied, or bowed. . . the difference was that she was never interrupted by a Raven carrying a message from one of the others.

Lucy’s footsteps never pelted across the stone floors. Peter never swept her up in a bear hug that smelled of actual Bear. Edmund failed utterly to interrupt her study of the old laws from the time before the White Witch.

At the end of the first week, Susan turned to the chancellor of the exchequer, a Pig named Tyrone, and invited him for an after-dinner drink with her in the study that Peter had used. Pigs having hoofs, Tyrone had to snuffle his tea from a saucer, which in no way detracted from a useful conversation on taxation. She promised herself to extend the same invitation to each of her counselors.

In the second week, Susan found herself _listening_ whenever there was silence. Each creak or patter deceived her with hope that the others might have returned, that there’d be news, that she had not lost her family in the distance between one step and another.

She reorganized her schedule so that her chief lady-in-waiting, a large marmalade-striped Cat, was always with her. Tabby might sleep two-thirds of the day, but she was a comforting presence and had a remarkable head for details heard while she seemed to be dreaming.

In the third week, Susan found herself awake in the small hours of the morning. She took to bringing books and scrolls up from the archives, looking for any mention of an iron tree.

On the last night of the fourth week, Lord Peridan was her guest for after-dinner conversation. He preferred his tea with honey and milk—she knew that. He preferred cheese to sweet biscuits—she knew that. He would be passionate on matters of diplomacy with lands beyond the western border, to the point of waxing tedious on minor points—she knew that.

She was completely surprised when he went down on one knee and requested her hand in marriage.

“Get up,” was her first reaction, which was not especially queenly.  “Please, Lord Peridan, there’s no need—”

“There’s every need.” He didn’t rise. That meant he was looking up at her, brown eyes earnest in his dark face. His features were beautifully regular, with a long nose and square chin. “A queen won’t rule long alone. This faithful courtier offers his hand and heart, to serve you more dearly.”

“I’m flattered.” That was a necessary disclaimer. A queen is always flattered when people demand her attention and approval. “But there’s no reason a queen can’t rule alone. Queen Swanwhite did.”

“So did the White Witch. It’s not a desirable precedent, Your Majesty. Besides—” Lord Peridan gestured vaguely to his left. He had startlingly graceful fingers. “There are _four_ thrones now. They’re all supposed to be filled with Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve.”

Susan forced a little laugh. “I can’t marry three men.”

“No, but you can marry one and bear two children. I don’t ask to be King—Prince Consort is more than enough, but if you don’t marry a Narnian, there will be emissaries to ask you to marry a foreign prince who may be less amenable to our independence. When you turn aside the emissaries, they will be followed by armies. No, dear Majesty, you must marry soon and from among the few humans in the court.”

“ _Please_ rise, Lord Peridan.” When he hesitated, she felt a flash of mixed fear and anger. Tabby was asleep on the window seat, and surely the Cat would rouse if Lord Peridan’s intentions were other than honorable. Still, Susan’s eyes darted to the heavy wooden door, to the carved chair that blocked her path to it (that would have to be moved, it must never be there again), to the oak table she could dodge behind and books she could throw _if only_ Peridan would move so she wasn’t trapped in her chair.

Next time, there would be a table beside her, a proper one that couldn’t be moved, with a dagger in the drawer.

When he scrambled to his feet, brushing at the knees of his stockings, Susan stood so quickly that she felt a cramp in her hip. Pacing was better—it could at least put the big table between the two of them.

“What if I choose not to marry, but to defend my kingdom and my right to rule it?”

“The Tisroc has more sons than Rabadash and more armies than the two hundred horse that threatened Anvard. If not him, then the Telmarines in the far west. People fear Narnia’s magic, but with three of the four Lion-ordained rulers gone, the magic will seem less fearsome.”

“I see.” Susan tried to summon how she’d felt when Rabadash had first visited Narnia: the glowing excitement, the giddiness, the _desire_ to be touched and tousled and kissed and. . . other things. It seemed, now, incredibly remote.

Peridan stood with his hand on the back of his chair— _of course,_ that’s why there’d been a chair between her and the door, but her racing mind had dropped details like careless stitches—which meant he was not in her space, he was not approaching her, and from her new position beyond the table, he was not between her and the door. He looked more startled and confused than threatening. He had not intended to be. . . like the other one, the one who was pale and golden on the outside but knotted with anger in his heart.

She forced her attention back to the matter at hand. “How would a Narnian husband protect me, where my armies cannot?”

“They’d. . . they’d have no pretext to invade, with your hand taken. . .” His voice faltered as he saw the gap in his reasoning.

“They’d simply kill you, Peridan.”

The way his face sagged made her add, more gently: “Sit. Please. I don’t want to, but you should.”

He sat as one massive dark slump, like a Marshwiggle. “It wasn’t political ambition, Your Majesty. I truly do—”

“Your loyalty is unquestioned, Lord Peridan.” _If I ever feel. . . if I ever want. . ._ But the situation went far beyond feeling and wanting. She did not want to see him dead, and if she were ever to love him, she would want it even less so.

Peter would have clapped Peridan on the shoulder in the way that men, centaurs, and bears found comforting. Edmund would have hugged him. But he had not asked Peter or Edmund to marry him, and it wasn’t Peter’s or Edmund’s hands that were shaking within the shelter of wide trumpet sleeves.

“We will speak of this to no one,” Susan said.

In the fifth week of her reign, Prince Corin of Archenland arrived to renew his suit for her hand.


End file.
